Concerns about the Euro and happiness in Germany during times of crisis

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Abstract:This empirical study investigates if people's concerns about the euro currency affect their life satisfaction. A minority of very concerned individuals appear to be unhappy, which cannot be explained by personality or other observable factors typically affecting well-being. As a novelty, this investigation exploits exogenous variation in reported concerns by using the intensity of media coverage on the euro crisis with its extraordinary events throughout the year 2011 as an instrument. Results from the application of several empirical approaches confirm that there is an effect from being concerned about the euro on people's satisfaction with life. The first potential explanation is that perceived economic insecurity works as a transmission channel, but this is not fully supported by the empirical evidence. A second explanation suggests that political beliefs and euro-skeptic attitudes are at play and may trigger unhappiness as a consequence of a perceived lack of representation in German politics. In line with this argument, a regional analysis links the variation in unhappiness among concerned citizens to the actual votes for Germany's first major anti-euro party in the subsequent federal elections. JEL Classification Codes:D72, H11, I31

The Protestant Fiscal Ethic: Religious Confession and Euro Skepticism in Germany

“…This news aggregator covers many significant media outlets in Germany, most of which have a national audience. Chadi () contains more detailed information on the use of number of media citations of the term “euro crisis” ( Eurokrise or Euro‐Krise in German) as an instrument. The instrument works best if one takes the aggregate number of media reports mentioning the term “euro crisis” over the day of the interview plus the preceding 3 days.…”

“…Respondents are less likely to report dissatisfaction with life in oral interviews (Conti and Pudney ) and less likely to report disapproval of politically sensitive issues like immigration (Janus ; Wagner and Schraepler ). Chadi () examines the question of survey mode in our context in more detail. In the IV analysis, we focus on data from all self‐written interview modes (and exclude oral interviews).…”

“…However, this effect appears to be entirely driven by the Protestants in our sample. Chadi (2015) emphasizes the importance of different survey modes. This justifies the exclusion of all observations for which an interviewer was present all the time.…”

“…During the time of the euro implementation, and again in 2011, respondents were asked whether they were concerned about the “introduction of the euro in place of the Deutsche mark.” In line with the literature (e.g., Goebel et al ), we use a dummy indicator for whether respondents say they are “very concerned” to measure euro concerns. Chadi () uses these responses from the 2011 wave to investigate whether strong concerns about the euro matter for people's overall satisfaction with life. Chadi shows that euro skepticism is a causal determinant of lower subjective well‐being for a minority of very concerned German citizens and their relative unhappiness helps predict subsequent election results.…”

Macroeconomic conditions and well-being: do social interactions matter?

“…More recently, a number of authors have focused on the effects of the current economic and financial crisis in terms of subjective well-being(Deaton, 2012;Chadi, 2015).…”